Trover Saves the Universe Review

If Justin Roiland’s offbeat sense of humour and nihilistic tendencies has you checking the TV for the latest season of Rick and Morty, then chances are you’ve already played Trover Saves the Universe. If, however, you’ve lacked the capacity of divulging in the experience like your PS4 and PC brethren, then Switch players can rest easy. Like the previously mentioned versions, Trover is easily the funniest game in recent memory, and with or without VR, it’s a great, bite-sized adventure through an unconventional, but hilariously sickening world.

Similar to games like Astro Bot Rescue Mission, you guide the purple, literally baby-eyed Trover around the universe from the perspective of a Chairorpion – a chair bound humanoid. You can expect the usual nonsense from Roiland and co pushing the story forward, as an evil alien steals your dogs, pops them into his eye sockets and (obviously) uses them to take over the world. It’s absurd and crude, with a constant barrage of hideously poor taste jokes and language, but the magic of working through Trover is intertwining yourself into the weird folds of hilarious oddities.

Controlling Trover from the seat of your chair is unrestrictive, despite the lack of VR capabilities, exploring the world as the purple alien, transporting to locations across the map to move back and forwards. There’s a hefty amount of platforming sections that require you to leap and jump around the map, and by manipulating the camera to see different sections you can fully explore areas to look for new ways of figuring things out and finding elusive secret power babies, which are Trover’s vice in this messed up universe.

By the time you’re halfway through the second or so world, you’ll have already unlocked a couple of key upgrades, such as the abilities to move your chair up and down and roll Trover around the map. These upgrades allow you to change your viewpoint to reach further areas and squeeze through tight gaps to access new places. Much later on, you’ll unlock chair upgrades that allow for environment manipulation, like grabbing and moving items, sometimes, for practical effects, like making platforms to cross areas, others, purely to cause chaos, like launching swords at squat, triangle-shaped chicken creatures.

And whilst at first, combat seems a little meat and potatoes, the more you play the more engaging it becomes. Mostly, it’s because the enemies are so downright ridiculous (as are some of the, questionable, challenges), with quirks that need mastering and baffling abilities that need overcoming. Trover might not have the biggest arsenal of weaponry, but he packs a wallop with his fake lightsaber – it’s satisfying to hear the crunch of wave after wave of weird chicken creatures fall under the weight of your sword, their potty mouth cursing away in retort as their friends comes after you in revenge.

There’s times, especially later in the game that things can get a little overwhelming. Pulling off tricks as both the Chairorpian and Trover at the same time can be tricky – I imagine these are probably easier on a VR platform where you don’t have to use your hands to rotate the camera at the same time as moving Trover. It sometimes leads to fatal cheap deaths that don’t seem your fault, but it’s a rare occurrence that can be forgiven.

Each world is true to Roiland’s style, and fans of Rick and Morty will instantly feel at home – something that Roiland isn’t afraid of making fun of. And while we’re on the subject, Trover isn’t afraid of making digs at just about anyone – it’s a walking, talking riff making, offensive dig machine. There’s an option to censor the game, but surely the whole point is to immerse yourself in the art and comedy style alike?

The universe is full of places like Flesh World, a living zoo that’s being used as a jail, to great looking castles and forests with multiple sections to explore. Enemies and inhabitants are the usual brightly coloured blobs and weird humanoid aliens that kinda creep you out that you see in the work of Roiland. It’s all, totally and utterly asinine, but it’s all, totally excellent.

The main story will take you around four hours to complete on a single run, a little longer if you stop to take in the mindless chatter of the many strange beings that inhabit each planet. Hidden around each world are a bunch power babies to find too. I’m not usually a fan of hunting out pointless secrets, but I found the clever hiding places and generally stupid OTT level design worth delving back into the rabbit hole to find the rest of the pesky green toddlers. As well as the main campaign, the recently released DLC is included, which is a short but much welcome addition to the games journey. It’s more of the same – another hour of idiocy, but it’s totally different to the main campaign and adds a new flavour to the pairs adventure.

There’s not many games you can have this much fun on more than one level; it’s a great platform-adventure but it’s also hilarious. Very small issues aside, Trover is a class act in mixing two mediums together.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Nintendo Switch code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.